Key Takeaways from the Fringe Academy Social Media Workshop

How to harness social media

09 March 2018

Social media can leave some users baffled, perplexed and utterly lost. It can seem like a science or a full time job or even complete nonsense. In truth, it’s a low cost marketing tool that can support your wider marketing plan with somewhat minimal effort. You can easily target certain groups, demographics and individuals and get real time responses from journalists, audience members and fellow performers.

Get into the habit of creating content

Snapping a picture at your next rehearsal, recording a short video or boomerang when you pick up your printed flyers or live-tweeting your first script read-through. Whatever the activity, there is content to be made from it. If you get into a habit of creating content, you’ll help to avoid spamming your followers with the same message over and over ‘Buy tickets to my show’.

Make a content schedule

Choose a platform like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, and set a calendar of when and what you will post. This can be a simple list of dates with copy for the next months’ worth of posts next to it. This way you can plan your key messages in advance – like auditions, events, tickets on sale, thank-yous and whatever else you’re up to.

It’s important to be consistent with the regularity of your posts, but don’t over commit to posting every day of the week when realistically you’ll only manage once or twice. Start slow and build the habit.

Schedule Facebook posts in advanced

A very helpful feature for Facebook pages can be found under ‘publishing tools’ > ‘scheduled posts’. From here you can schedule in your posts days, weeks, and months in advanced.

Share across platforms

If you have accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram use a tool like ITTT to cross post your content.

Creating Facebook events

The most important thing to remember when creating your event listing on Facebook is to include the ticket link. Don’t create the event if tickets aren’t on sale yet and make sure everyone involved is inviting friends and sharing the event across their personal pages too. To keep those interested in the event in-the-loop you can post directly into the discussion feed in the event.

Have fun with social media. Connect with people and interact. Find your audience and find your voice. It's a great tool for trial and error, testing and tweaking.